


Ever After

by WinterDusk



Series: Have Tesseract, Will Travel [9]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-06-12
Packaged: 2021-03-03 18:37:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24590140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WinterDusk/pseuds/WinterDusk
Summary: Valkyrie’s had a cruel return to sobriety, one with far too much time for thinking.  She might hate Thor, just a little, for that.  So, when Jane Foster, heartbreaker extraordinaire, arrives in a howl of helicopter blades, it's something of a welcome diversion.Ties into a series if you squint.  Otherwise you can read this as a stand-alone for some Jane and Valkyrie interaction.
Relationships: Brunnhilde | Valkyrie & Jane Foster, Brunnhilde | Valkyrie & Thor (Marvel)
Series: Have Tesseract, Will Travel [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1353133
Comments: 2
Kudos: 27





	1. Night Time

From outside her open window, she can hear waves lap gently, their song mingling with hissing shingles and the fading crash of far-distant breakers. Otherwise, Tønsberg lies silent; sleeping, if not exactly restful. And, if all her subjects are away, lost in their dreams, then why isn’t she?

Valkyrie would like to blame the moon. It’s too bright; shining in through the window as if in defiance of the sun. But the moon, bright as it may be, is simply an irritant. It doesn’t explain why Valkyrie’s chest aches, heavy, with something that tastes like failure or defeat. Doesn’t account for her guilt, when she’s doing exactly what she needs to be doing.

(Doing what she _thinks_ it is that she needs to be doing.)

Why _does_ it feel like she’s _failed_ (again)?

It’s not a new feeling, though familiarity’s never worn it thin. Valkyrie’d settled on a solid cure to this sensation centuries ago: booze, battle, denial, with booze the best of the lot. A few good bottles and, hey-presto!, out for the night.

Yet here she is! Lumbered with acting responsibly; bound to remaining sober.

(And why did she accept that millstone? Thor ran away from his people; why can’t she? What internal idiocy’s _stopping_ her?)

Because that’s exactly what she’s being: an idiotic masochist. She’s pretending to be a rock for her people (Odin’s people). She’s meeting with the mortals (Odin’s allies); offering them assistance in their battles; listening to their _bloody stupid_ ideas about how to take forwards their conflicts (with Odin’s enemies) and-

And like that, she circles to the unacknowledged root of her current guilt. Because, right or not, she shouldn’t have agreed to the request that the mortals made; shouldn’t have recalled the Milano.

Thor? Loki? On Midgard or, worse yet, in Tønsberg? What had she been _thinking_?

(And no, it doesn’t matter how she tries, they’re not Odinsons to her, not anymore, though it might rest easier on her conscience if she could blame _them_ on _him_. Rather, they’re-)

Irritation flashes through her. For why can’t her thoughts lie silent and let her rest!

Tossing, Valkyrie tries to find a comfortable side for sleep, but the bed’s thin blankets seem designed to crease; the rough wooden bedframe to groan with her every movement. Surely it’s loud enough to wake the dead?

_She should have stayed on Sakaar._

(She certainly can’t stay in here, trapped with the things in her head.)

Throwing off her covers, Valkyrie swings her feet over the edge of her cot. Lets her soles rest on the flags there. The cold stone floor should be bracing, but instead just lets her know just how very _not asleep_ she had been. How far away any semblance of peace might be.

_She really needs a drink._

There’s a long, dark night ahead of her. She throws on a cloak acknowledging that there’s no point in pretending to a restfulness she doesn’t feel. It’s time to walk.

#

She used to walk a lot. Pretty much all of the time.

When Hela-

After _that-_

It’s how Valkyrie escaped from the badlands. Only it hadn’t much felt like escape at the time. More like an endless, hopeless slog where she walked just because there was nothing else she could do. Where she might as well beat her feet bloody, because the rest of her seemed unable to die, and _by the Norns,_ she intended to damage _something_!

She forced herself forward because she couldn’t stay where she was, and she couldn’t kill Hela or defy Odin or save Bodil.

(And why did Bodil do that? Why die for Valkyrie, condemning her to this unhappy ever after?)

At some point she tripped.

Even now, she doesn’t know how she fell; where that passageway started. All that matters is where it ended: a thousand years serving a monster, give or take a century or two.

A thousand years to follow a previous millennium serving different monsters. Odin; Hela. Neither of them promised a life filled with calm and rest, but that they’d lead to Valkyrie’s whole world being laid to waste? To blood and broken feathers scattered on dry ground? To Bodil-

And for what?

The Grandmaster hadn’t been any better, true. But he hadn’t been any worse. Only different.

For who cared if people died in pits beating each other bloody? Did it really matter if it was for the approval of a king on his high throne, or to drive the baying howls of an audience? Standing in the shattered desecration of her hopes and dreams, Asgard hadn’t looked all that different from Sakaar. Hels! It hadn’t looked like there was much of _any place_ different in the whole, wide, spread of reality.

And it certainly hadn’t been worth getting sober for long enough to count the passing of the days; the spinning of eternity. (To count the deaths that she’s overseen.)

With sudden vigour, Valkyrie pulls open her front door. But even as she does, the jaded fragments of her mind mock her. For can she really expect that a mere change of scene will bring her respite?

#

Outside, the night air is cuttingly cold. Not surprising, considering the realm’s current situation. Tønsberg’s skies are clear and the street is empty. No one else is about; it feels unnatural.

_An Asgardian camp without a mead hall is like a horse without wings._ That’s what Bodil would have said. She wouldn’t have been wrong.

Tønsberg doesn’t have a public house, unfathomable though that might seem. While Thor had resided here, what few supplies they gained, intoxicant-wise, had rapidly been appropriated. Under normal circumstances, Valkyrie wouldn’t have let that happen – maybe she shouldn’t have let it happen under their abnormal circumstances either – but Thor had been…

She’d had a thousand years of not facing the world sober. Was it mercy or pity or just stupidity that caused her to leave him be?

Certainty, when Valkyrie joined the Revengers, she hadn’t been banking on losing all access to alcohol. (Who could have predicted her future besides a collapsing thunder god?) Hadn’t thought she’d have to look the hard world face on.

It might not be how she intended to end up sober, though there are doubtless those that would say it’s been good for her. She’s not sure that she agrees. Isn’t certain if she’d choose to be as she is if Thor hadn’t taken all of her options; if she hadn’t damned the consequences and banned alcohol with his departure.

Two thousand years of nothing but death; it’s been a cruel return to sobriety. Sometimes she thinks she might hate Thor, just a little, for that.

As Valkyrie reaches the harbour, it is to see the sun slowly rise; all bright crimsons and creeping brilliance. And with it comes the howling moan of approaching helicopter blades.

The promise of distraction is a relief.


	2. Dawn

Ingemar comes, later than Valkyrie expects, to fetch her to their visitors.

Despite all the open grasslands around, the helicopter has landed on a small beach to the north of the settlement. It leaves Valkyrie wondering why the humans chose that spot. Certainly the sand will suck at a departing craft’s runners, holding it more desperately than the packed earth could.

Crossing the beach, shingles scrunch underneath her feet. Soon there’ll be frost on them, for all that it’s barely September as the mortals count it; a perversion of the seasons brought about by the realm’s ‘visitors’.

The frost giants are a situation that need resolving, even if the humans seem to prefer talking and not doing, behaving like mere words will make up for a lack of more concrete action. And they think that she’s being impatient. That she – for all her long life – ironically has no time for nuance. Not that they’re wrong. She’s never had a great deal of patience for beings who are all mouth and no action.

_May I present myself? I am Loki, Master of Sorcery. I think you’ll find we can be of great benefit to one another._

And, alright, Loki turned out to be a surprise. All ceaseless babbling and flowery phrases, then he’d gone and been part-way useful. Got himself dead for it too, though that hadn’t seemed to stick. With all his talking and ferreting things out, it just doesn’t make sense that the mortals hate him quite so much as they do. What’s one invasion attempt between neighbours? It’s not like the mortals aren’t more than willing to forgive and forget other infractions; the frost giants being a current point in case.

Maybe, if Valkyrie’s uncharacteristically lucky, the humans will turn out to have some of Loki’s – very buried – backbone.

#

When she arrives, her visitors are milling around their helicopter, equipment strewn every which-way. For a moment they remind her of the settlement’s children, newly shown to their duties; all chaos and energy. Then they turn to face her and her perception changes, for it’s like she can read their essence in their eyes. They look like Gast and remind her of mind-games and control.

One of the men strides forward, hand extended. “Your majesty, I’m Agent Coulson. This is Dr Foster.” He gestures to a woman that Valkyrie doesn’t need to have met in person to recognise.

“I remember.” If she can recall names when dead drunk, then why does everyone keep reminding her now that she’s sober? “Why are you here?”

“We’re here to help you set up your communications systems.”

Set up the…? She eyes the equipment that Coulson’s brought with him; what few items she doesn’t recognise, she can guess the purposes of: telecommunications.

Coulson’s indicating with evident self-satisfaction, like he doesn’t realise that she’s credits enough to buy all of his tat and more. On Sakaar. Using currency she’d earned through peddling living beings.

More to the point, credits that are currently in an account on a world that she’s tried to destabilise. Yeah, she’s never getting _those_ back.

Which isn’t exactly relevant at the moment.

“Our systems are fine.” She shrugs, aiming for a show of blithe indifference, though suspecting she instead sounds miffed. “Better than yours.” It’s an effort not to say ‘we don’t need your help’ when, in so many ways, they do.

Jane’s face is quick to curiosity, but Coulson’s frowning and – though the novelty of meeting the object of Thor’s mutual decoupling, or however he’d termed it, has Valkyrie burning to know what Thor’s old flame would say – he’s the one who speaks. “You don’t have access to advanced-”

“Oddly enough,” Valkyrie cuts him off, before he can grind salt into wounds formed by all the things her people no longer have, “one of the few useful items that we _could_ salvage from our wreckage and escape pods were the comms systems. You do know about salvage, right? It’s where you take old things to reuse them as new things.”

“Salvage is good.” Maybe the Agent thinks that his dark glasses make him hard to read. She’s a three thousand year old goddess of the battlefield. She can spot a flustered face a mile off. “Perfectly reasonable.”

“Of course, it’s reasonable. Unless you want to cover your entire realm with trash.” Earth, Sakaar: both looking to end up much the same, though one has considerably more control over the situation than the other.

There’s the tiniest, twitching suggestion that he wants to flatten his lips, but is trying, very, very hard, to look calm. She should probably stop provoking him. Her people are here on suffrage.

It’s just that it’s been a very long time since anyone expected her to stand of ceremony. She’s all out of practice.

“And can we _see_ these comms systems, your majesty?”

Like they’re carefully stashed away. “Why?”

“Well, you haven’t exactly been fast to raise Thor.” Not fast to raise Thor? Valkyrie can feel her eyebrows rise. “And we need to-”

“It’s a little bit hard,” and, yes, she wants him to choke on his condescension, “to get in contact with someone who won’t answer the damn phone.” Then she tags on a smile; trying to look all sweetness and charm, because she’s meant to be _diplomatic_ , damn it! (And, no, she’s _not_ asking Lackey for tips when he lands.) “However, if you’ve got a faster-than-light drive lying around, then by all means, I’d be delighted to just go haring across the galaxy to fetch him.” Like she doesn’t have _enough_ to do as is! “What? Is that a ‘no’ to the drive?”

“Your highness. If you would just-”

“Either way,” she continues, “your journey here was wasted. I got hold of him late yesterday.”

“Yesterday?” Jane and Coulson exchange a look; there’s definitely something going on there. “And you didn’t tell us?”

“Nooo.” She draws the word out; tries to remember to be agreeable, but can feel her temper slipping away from her. “Because you _never asked me to_. Oddly enough, I’m rather too busy running a kingdom to make unnecessary courtesy calls.”

“Thor’s actually coming? I wasn't-” But Coulson seems to change his mind about whatever it is that he wanted to say. “Well, he doesn’t have to come now.”

Valkyrie thinks she’s going to get whiplash, just from dealing with mortals. “What?”

“He doesn’t have to come. In fact, it might be better if he stays away. You see, we have a treaty with the king of Jotunheim now and Thor’s presence could-”

She raises her hand. “I’m going to stop you right there.” She simply _can not_ deal with this business of… mortals being mortal. How in Bor’s name did Thor put up with them? “Stop.”

Coulson almost looks alarmed, “I can see that this might be-”

“No. No more. Stop.” How did this work for the Grandmaster? Maybe she needs a Melt Stick, too? “The comms kit is set up, over there, in the second shed to the right. It’s your mess, you sort it out.”

Though, if they’re fool enough to plan peace with Jotunheim, it might be best to hope that Thor’s as slow at picking up for them as he is for her.

“Um.”

“And you,” this to Jane, already poised to strike outwards to the comms shed, “come with me.”


	3. Morning

Valkyrie leads Jane away from the mortals and their distracting attempts to raise Thor; heading instead for the settlement’s communal hall.

The hall is… basic. Benches, tables, a long counter between the sitting area and the facilities to make drinks. Someone has started a mural on the far wall; one full of light and dark and a shattering destruction. From the work cloths and paint cans lying around it looks like work only stopped the evening before.

Appearances can be deceptive. Or, as Bodil would say, _Believing the best of things just leads to disappointment._

( _He’s a friend from work!_ Of course, Thor’s approach to possible disappointment had been more… _And he knows that I love snakes!_ It made Valkyrie’s head spin, that anyone could keep on being so optimistic, so willingly friendly, when at every turn it was flung back in their face. _I think it’s great; an elite force of women warriors!_ Save that now that light’s gone, leaving her floundering. For how can she take heart from a man who no longer disregards crushing failure?)

As for the mural… There’s a fierce fight waging over the scene; one which has not been resolved in several days now. Valkyrie’s not certain that the memorial will ever get finished. Maybe she’ll walk in tomorrow to find someone’s whitewashed the wall and started on a meaningless mass of flowers.

Like a pretty facade can hide their wounds.

Suddenly heart-weary, Valkyrie leans against the doorframe. It has the end result of letting Jane go on ahead.

If she wanted to lie to herself, Valkyrie could say she’s giving Jane space enough to be whatever she’s meant to be; to get a measure of the doctor’s character. Will Jane sit at a table, meekly? Go to look at the paintwork with faux artistic interest? Perhaps she will pace awkwardly, or even turn her back on Valkyrie and pretend to look thoughtfully out of the window?

Physically the woman’s tiny; hardly possessing the stature of a warrior, nor the bearing of one either. Not like the tales Valkyrie’s heard of the Lady Sif or of Queen Frigga. Now _those_ were women Valkyrie could see herself building something with.

Jane makes a beeline for the counter. Valkyrie’s first thought is that the woman wants a drink. It’s not a bad idea.

She follows Jane over. Wonders how to break it to the mortal that her choices are water, tea or coffee.

There are papers on the counter; no one’s disturbed them since Valkyrie set the bundle down last night and, honestly, in the ‘excitement’ of finally getting hold of the Milano, she’d forgotten that she’d left them there. Why worry? It’s not as though anyone _wants_ to read Midgardian paperwork.

Except apparently Jane gravitates towards the papers like Valkyrie aches towards beer.

Jane can’t seem to stop herself from flicking through the pages. For a moment Valkyrie entertains the notion that mortals experience some sort of euphoric hit from cellulose and ink, and that’s why they generate so much of the stuff.

But charming though the scene is, it doesn’t exactly offer flattering insight into Jane’s character: bookworm, quitter, paper-addict. Everyone liked – or at least respected – Sif, yet Thor had preferred this little ball of mortal fluff? It’s almost incomprehensible. She must be missing something. “Why you?”

Jane blinks, evidently confused, as she looks up from the pages she’s holding. Then she answers the question that she must assume Valkyrie intended. “I think they thought I’d be the best person to send. Because of. You know.”

“Is that so?” Personally, Valkyrie’s not certain that fact doesn’t make Jane the worst person for ‘them’ to have sent. And then, remembering that she should probably continue to be polite, offers, “Tea?” before starting to prepare a brew.

Into their uneasy silence, Jane offers up: “Employment law?” Her fingers are soothing across the title page.

Her very meekness leaves Valkyrie wanting to deflect; maybe start a fight. (And is that just because Valkyrie’s tried and frustrated and has troubles on her plate that she never ordered?)

Instead of starting purposeless trouble, Valkyrie feigns nonchalance and shrugs. “Did you know that, in the instance of disability, employers have to make ‘reasonable workplace adjustments’?”

Jane frowns, thinking, but behind that focus her face grows troubled. “I think that’s a local law. European or something. We have a different law in the US.”

The wonders of a fractured world governance. “If you say so.”

“I thought Tønsberg was able to set its own laws.”

As though Valkyrie can proceed with no consideration for their neighbours’ sensibilities! Or maybe it hasn’t crossed Jane’s mind that Asgard has people who will venture, may even be _requested_ , beyond the town’s limits, and so must know the laws beyond their boarders. “We can. When we want. Maybe I don’t want to.”

“Oh.” Jane looks down at the papers again. “Have your lawyers considered if there are any implications for New Asgard?”

“Lawyers have never been much of a thing on Asgard, old or new. It was usually more of a case of ‘Odin says’.” Now it’s what she says.

Thor had struggled with that, with the weight of rule, more than Valkyrie had expected. True, the demands are ever-present, and Valkyrie wishes she had someone to share them with. But Thor should have known what to expect. Instead he passed the ‘honour’ to her.

What, exactly, does that make her? His heir? A regent to the crown?

Is it truly her crown now? To hold and to rule until the end of days? _Norns_ , but that's a terrifying thought.

But she _can_ do this. Can rule Asgard. _Is_ ruling Asgard. She knows what it takes; she’s just not certain whether Jane meets part of that need.

For Asgard is looking for a Queen. And Valkyrie is looking for _her_ queen.

#

She’s so wrapped up in thoughts of Thor, which leads to remembering their losses and then to wondering how the hels they’re all going to cope with the fall-out of Agent Coulson’s conflicting string of requests and foolish peace treaty, that Jane’s, “Odin always was a bit much,” manages to startle a snort of laughter from her.

Apparently she’ll speak her opinions. That’s not nothing.

Valkyrie’s almost contemplating warming to the woman as she hands over a mug of tea, but then Jane goes and ruins it all, by adding, in a voice both low and sad, “But Thor loved him.”

_That’s_ too much. Too intimate and faux-caring, coming from this stranger standing in front of Valkyrie.

Valkyrie takes a gulp of her own tea, wishing it was hot enough to burn (wishing it was _alcoholic_ enough to burn). She turns their conversation back from Odin and Thor. “You didn’t answer my question,” and twists that question so that it suits her new purpose, “why are you really here?”

“Maybe I don’t know how to answer your question.” Jane’s smile is wry around the brim of her mug. “I honestly don’t know whether I’m here to help you, or to learn from you.”

“Learn from us?” Valkyrie laughs. “Right. Well, I can tell you, straight off, that that’s not the answer. The only times your people have ever called upon us, over the years, is when you want to go to war.”

Jane’s lips twist, face folding like Valkyrie’s punched her rather than spoken a simple truth. “There should be other things. Not just war. There could be collaboration and learning. Friendship.”

Valkyrie wonders where all of these friends where, back when Thor was falling apart and in need.

And then she wonders how she could be so _naïve_ as to think that this is about Thor or her people.

“Are you talking about Asgard and Midgard, Lady Jane? Or about _Jotunheim_?”

Oh! Valkyrie knows that guilty look from the mirror!

“They know things.” The first defence of anyone talking to someone they shouldn’t. “They have resources, and a need for our resources. We could start to trade.”

“That’s never worked before.”

But Jane nods, like Valkyrie has made a different point to the one she intended. “You said it yourself. Odin didn’t exactly play nice, he kept us in ignorance and isolation, and-”

“I’m telling you, it’s not going to work.” Jotunheim and its war had been after her time. But the stories she’s heard… Valkyrie’s had a lifetime in parsing truth from family tales of heroics; she can read that battle well enough. “Your realm is not strong enough. They won’t respect you, and they won’t hold to their treaty with you.”

Jane smiles. It’s an awkward smile; one Valkyrie recognises well enough from Sakaar. It’s the look of someone wondering how _anyone_ could be so forward and uncouth; a smile stemming from a frustrated inability to countermand the Grandmaster’s favoured scrapper.

Valkyrie hadn’t realised _how calming_ it had been, not seeing that façade in the years since Sakaar.

So, apparently there’s been one benefit from following Thor, barren list though it is.

(But, even in her own head, she can’t let that stand. Rather, in a voice that sounds far too much like Thor’s upbeat sell for the Revengers, she seems to hear _No fakery, some respect, and maybe even a handful of friends. And you’re calling that barren?_ And the Thor in her head is right. Because it might be a short list, but it’s more than she’s had in centuries.)

“With what we learn from each other, both realms could both become stronger. New Asgard, too.” Somehow, despite tagging the Aesir on to the end, there’s something in Jane’s badly-placed conviction that stops Valkyrie feeling that her people have been forgotten.

Is this what Thor saw in her? Her optimistic hope for a better future?

Certainly, that idealism balanced with the might of Asgard-as-Was could have worked, but now…?

“Doctor Foster, I think that you misunderstand the nature of the people you’re talking with.”

“It will work. And, if it doesn’t, well, we held back Thanos.” Said with perfect certainty.

Valkyrie tries not to remember the death toll. “I’m sure Wakanda’s going to love hearing that. Aren’t they still rebuilding?”

Jane frowns. “There’s more to Earth’s defences than just Wakanda.”

“If you say so.” What’s Midgard’s current status? Their Iron Man dead; their super warrior in retirement; and as for Thor…? “Good luck with that.”

#

This is where Valkyrie would normally walk away.

Except she’s stuck on a _planet_ with these idiots, and she’s got a village full of bereaved subjects to keep safe. If she’s any luck, Thor will utterly disregard Coulson’s ‘mission cancelled’ message, because this is one battle Valkyrie doesn’t think she can handle alone.

“I can see,” Jane presses forward, “that, after everything you have been through, it’s difficult to imagine a brighter future. But we all have to try and build something better.”

So apparently Jane (correctly, alas!) thinks Valkyrie’s people in shock as much as mourning. And she just can’t answer that. Not right now. “Maybe you should-” _go and check on Coulson_ , is how Valkyrie’s going to end their little heart-to-heart.

“Hey. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to… to bring up unpleasant subjects. It’s not my place.” Even though, if Valkyrie understands correctly, Thor had once thought that it might be. “Look, I brought a bottle.” Jane pulls out something shining and golden as bottled sunlight, smile slightly strained. “I guess I thought I’d need a peace offering.”

Because bringing alcohol to alcoholics is _so wise_.

But maybe the mortal is simply acting in ignorance?

The problem is, now that Thor’s gone, there’s no one here to drink all the alcohol before Valkyrie gets the chance. Hence going to the extremes of banishing it, the better to ensure her ability to carry on ruling. (And, yes, Valkyrie will break her own fingers before admitting to knowing about Goodwife Mildri’s ‘secret’ still; her people don’t deserve to be _yet more_ deprived on account of their king’s weakness.)

Depending on one’s own willpower is miserable.

Jane’s still talking, either not noticing Valkyrie’s quandary, or trying to smooth over whatever strain she perceives. “It’s whisky. Talisker. Erik and Thor used to-”

Valkyrie takes the bottle from Jane’s hand; doesn’t quite let herself admit that she’s snatched it. She smiles at Jane, all the while wondering if she should strangle her. “Other people say, ‘let’s make Asgard great again’, but me, I say…”

_I say, what the hels? Let’s get drunk!_

Norns, but Valkyrie misses her!

“Your majesty?” Jane’s frowning at her.

Is it better to pretend that nothing’s happened? Or to confess that she’s yet grieving a lover long centuries dead?

“You know what?” Valkyrie puts the bottle, unopened, back on the countertop. “It’s a nice day. Let’s walk.”


	4. Forenoon

There’s a hut, outside the town limits, over Mjolnir’s remains.

Thor raised it up. It’s the only endeavour, here, that he’s truly contributed to. To the best of Valkyrie’s knowledge, its construction was the last time that Thor touched Mjolnir, or even visited its resting place. She’s no idea whether anyone regularly walks out to the hut, but security is hardly an issue when it comes to fragments of unmovable relics.

With its links to Thor and the solitude of its location, the distant hut seems like as good a destination as any, and the route there is long and winding. Maybe the walk will cause Jane to open up; will let Valkyrie see in her whatever it was that Thor saw.

#

Valkyrie’s so used to directness, that it’s a struggle to find more coxing words. So it’s almost a relief when, after they have passed the last of the houses and sheds, Jane derails Valkyrie’s deliberations with an exasperated, “Don't you have a proper name? It’s really rather strange addressing someone by her job title.”

“Of course, I have a name.” Valkyrie smiles. “But what I _do_ is more important than what I'm called. Doctor.” Jane hesitates, then nods, but her face shows disquiet. She’s almost more transparent than Thor. Valkyrie hisses, impatient. “Go on.” What’s bothering the mortal _now_?

“It’s just that it seems very formal. Doctor this, and Valkyrie that. Maybe I wanted to get to know you better?” That wry smile again. “But you’re the first Asgardian I’ve met who doesn’t drink, and one of the few that don’t seem inclined to talking. Yet you must be nice; Thor seems very fond of you.”

Valkyrie raises an eyebrow. “And you could tell that from, what, one broadcast?” It’s not like people had been beating down the settlement’s doors, desperate to talk to them in their Tønsberg isolation.

Jane shrugs and her smile seems strained. “Oh, trust me, it was clear that he likes you.”

It’s so subtle, the innuendo almost passes Valkyrie by, though when hits, it’s almost enough to knock her off her feet. “You think he’s _sweet_ on me?”

Jane’s cheeks blush red as dawn; and okay, Valkyrie might be struggling to connect to the woman, but, warmed by the sunlight, she’s certainly pretty enough.

Embarrassed or not, (jealous or not,) Jane meets Valkyrie’s gaze steadily enough. “It certainly looked like a crush to me.”

Valkyrie laughs. “ _That’s_ not a crush.”

But remembering the interview, broadcast just after Thor returned from killing Thanos, and how relieved he’d seemed to see her there and waiting, with everything under control… Remembering afresh how he’d looked at her back on Sakaar, as they’d torn through the ships Gast sent to apprehend them… Valkyrie would have to lie to deny that such memories are fond.

They’re still not indications of a crush. “It’s just a healthy bit of hero worship.”

“Hero worship? Thor?” The look on Jane’s face is strange; like she can’t believe Thor would have any need for a hero. Or maybe that she can’t imagine that hero looking like Valkyrie.

Well, if Jane Foster had made time to come and visit at any point in the last five years, then she could have read the situation with her own two eyes, and drawn what conclusions she would!

And, if Jane’s doubt stings? Well, it’s bad enough that sometimes Valkyrie can’t believe in herself; struggles to see why anyone would look to her for heroism and salvation.

But her own doubts stem from experience. They exist because she knows herself in a way that this mortal never can; has seen the broken fragments where her drive and honour once lay.

What does Jane, whom has known Valkyrie a mere scattering of hours, see in her to judge her so?

_Thor_ had seen the woman she’d once been. Had looked at her, though the bars to the gladiators’ pit, with eyes willed with awe. Had seen the Valkyrie she had been and had believed, despite all evidence to the contrary, in her ability to become so again. Valkyrie thinks that she might love him for that; just a bit. For his worship.

(Wonders, sometimes, in those idle, sleep-starved moments, whether _this_ is the truth of why Asgardians are named gods. Not for their great power, but rather their need for faith. To have respect and love and honour, even if it’s only for themselves.)

Maybe that’s why she’d trusted him.

And from that trust, she’d decided he could be king.

_How could she have been so wrong?_

What had happened to the man she met? Full of passion and fury and absolute righteousness?

The problem is, she misread him from the get-go.

_That’s why I turned down the throne._ It was one of the first things that he ever said to her. Well, if one ignores the threats and the sulking and that really rather strange attempt to butter her up.

She’d not really paid it much heed. That’s just what people are meant to say, isn’t it? ‘Ooooh, look at this Dragonfang that I just happened to get given.’ Or ‘Sure, Bodil, I suppose I could step out with you.’ As though having all your dreams line up ahead of you is something you’re not meant to fall to the ground sobbing in gratitude for. As though you should pretend indifference.

_Had Bodil known, deep down inside, that what they’d had, that had never been casual? Not for Valkyrie?_

_Why had she never spoken plainer?_

And then there’d been Asgard, which Thor had seemed more than happy to assume the authority to destroy. The crowning on the New Statesman; he’d seemed fine with that, too.

With leading the charge against Thanos’s boarding.

And then she’d come back. Or, rather, he’d come back. For she’d rounded up the escape craft and led Asgard’s refugees to their new home on Earth. Had found a place for them; built up routines; listened to worries-

Thor hasn’t appeared for months after the Snap.

And, when he had-

He’d not been lying about not wanting to lead. All that had gone before – the ship, the battles, Sakaar – that had been different. _Hero_ , not King.

No one needed him to be a hero any more.

It had been a damned relief when Rocket turned up.

#

The path gets steeper. Jane keeps better pace than Valkyrie expects; though her breath starts to draw ragged at about the point where they leave the cattle’s low fields and reach the goat commons.

So when Jane stops, it’s not entirely clear if it’s to catch her breath, or to emphasise her point. “I really do mean it, you know? I _want_ to help.”

She looks so sincere. And yet, “Can you milk a goat?”

“What?”

“Can you milk a goat?”

“No.” The doctor’s expression appears torn between confusion and the irritation of one believing herself mocked. “Of course not. Can you?”

Which is something of a moot point, because Valkyrie’s got the challenge of running an entire settlement and so doesn’t have time to also go around, milking the goats. Admittedly, the settlement’s not that much larger than a garrison and so shouldn’t ordinarily be beyond her.

Nothing about the formation of New Asgard is ordinary.

“Of course, I can.”

Jane doesn’t look convinced, but doesn’t call Valkyrie on it. Which is good, because Valkyrie’s not in the mood to go chasing after livestock to prove her honour. Instead Jane says, “I’m pretty certain Thor can’t.”

Valkyrie’s pretty certain Thor _can_ , just that he _didn’t_. That he could do lots of things that he didn’t.

And while some days that annoyed her, it was a hypocritical type of irritation. For she recognises the stages he’s passing through. The anger, the fear, the drunkenness. The feeling that there’s too much to be done, so why even bother starting? Life can get like that sometimes.

But, ready to be king or not, Thor's strong; he'll grow out of it. Get over it. Whichever one is true.

Maybe one day Valkyrie, too, will be rid of her ghosts.

“Let’s keep going, Doctor Foster.”


	5. High Noon

The sun is hot on the back of Valkyrie’s neck when they reach the final stretch of their walk. They’ve been walking in silence for a while, although Jane keeps looking at the goats with a focussed type of consideration that’s starting to worry Valkyrie.

She’s half expecting to be asked for lessons in goat-keeping when Jane next opens her mouth. Instead she hears, “I don’t know why he had to stop fighting. I never thought… He’s always seemed so _certain_.”

“I see.” Valkyrie keeps walking; uses the rhythm of her steps to try to separate out the reasoning behind Jane’s statement. Gives it up as unfathomable, and says, “It was always going to happen.”

Tough as it had been to see Thor topple, felled like a great oak through a thousand blows of a stone axe, the outcome seems obvious from the distance of a few years. Mother, father, home world, refugees, brother: all gone. Sometimes Valkyrie’s surprised that he’s kept on going at all. Then reminds herself that, with their histories, she and Thor could be peas in a pod. Unable to die, but too damaged to live.

And, seeing that, their parallels are too clear to ignore: Thor was never going to be all right any more than Valkyrie herself was.

It’s depressing. Valkyrie doesn’t want to see the exhausting slog back to ‘healthy normalcy’ ahead of Thor; can’t bring herself to remember her own years since… then. Her struggle to rise up above her grief and hopelessness.

“I think that’s a bit judgemental.” Jane has her arms folded, a surprisingly mulish expression on her face. “How can you say that he’s doomed to…” she makes an agitated gesture that Valkyrie can’t be bothered interpreting, “…doomed to be broken? He’s kind and open-hearted! Not some alcoholic thug.”

And Valkyrie’s left wondering how they can be discussing the same topic, yet apparently approaching it so differently.

As frustrating as it has been to see Thor fall and be unable to stop it, without Thor falling messily apart here besides her, it’s easier to remember to be patient with him. To recall just how far _she_ fell. (A deserter, slaver, one with blood on her hands.)

Not that she’s planning to open up to this woman, here, before her.

And then Jane, looking at the long grass, says words that _echo_ through Valkyrie. “I feel guilty.”

Valkyrie actually considers walking away. She’s spent the morning trapped in her own thoughts; isn’t certain that she wants to contend with anyone else’s.

Apparently behaving responsibly is getting to be an ingrained habit. “Guilty how?”

Jane hisses; hands fisting in her hair. “I just feel like I should have _done something_. Helped him somehow.” Which is the daftest thing Valkyrie’s heard yet. Help? How? “Like, I _know_ that he’s my ex. But,” an imploring look at Valkyrie, as though, forget being king of this realm, she’s somehow also the judge of its visitors, “You don’t stop _caring_ for someone just because you split up. Not quickly.”

“Of course not.”

“But I still feel like it’s my fault. That I should have been able to do something.” She laughs, but sounds suddenly on the verge of tears. Valkyrie knows the feeling too well. Wishes she’d brought the tea along.

Hels, wishes Jane had kept the whiskey.

“You think one little ex-lover can fill the hole left by everything else collapsing?”

Jane’s smile is wry, crushed. “It does sound stupid when you put it like that, doesn’t it?”

More like egotistical, Valkyrie is going to say, but Jane’s not done. “I don’t know why I feel like this. He’s an adult. Our split was mutual. I don’t _owe_ him anything. But there’s still a whole lot of baggage saying that,” a wild arm gesture, “because I’m the girl in the relationship, somehow it’s my job to handle…” more wild gestures, “all of _everything_. To make sure everyone’s happy.”

Valkyrie’s not even certain where to begin picking through that idiocy. “Woman,” she tries. She doesn't need more children to mind.

Jane blinks. “What?”

“You’re not a girl. You’re a woman.” Girls shouldn’t be in adult relationships. Valkyrie’s pretty certain she’s even read mortal laws on that.

And she’s sober, and not happy with that. Certainly too sober for this conversation. “We should finish our walk.”

#

Though Mjolnir’s resting place is a small building, it’s one well made. Apparently at some point, in between the questing and the carousing and the general being-Thor-ness of his life, Thor actually learned some more peaceable skills.

Inside, the hut smells like tree-sap and, also, like ozone.

“It needs a window.” Jane steps into the room and promptly trips over the threshold stone. She catches her balance before Valkyrie can help her. “It’s hard to see anything in this gloom.”

“You can let Thor know that yourself.” Personally Valkyrie doesn’t think Thor was aiming for ‘light and airy’ when he built this mausoleum.

“Is this…?” Jane gestures to the roughly flattened stone in the centre of the space or, more exactly, to the fragments upon it.

And Valkyrie would ask Jane when she became so blind, but the woman’s face looks oddly gaunt in the half-light. She seems pained, merely to be looking upon the shattered hammer, and the strangeness of her reaction silences Valkyrie.

“That must have hurt.” But Valkyrie honestly can’t tell _who_ Jane is referring to; to Thor and the loss of his favourite weapon, or to a personification of that splintered hammer.

Jane steps over to the raised stone, and it’s hard to tell with her back to Valkyrie, but Valkyrie _thinks_ that the mortal might have reached out to _pet_ the fragments. Like they need soothing!

Through Valkyrie’s happy to be the first to admit that she doesn’t really understand Thor’s obsession with Mjolnir, she has to remind herself not to snap at Jane’s presumption. For it’s not like she can do any further harm to something already rendered unusable, nor can she make off with the steadfast fragments for some nefarious _research_.

Valkyrie doesn’t exactly understand the reverence others show Mjolnir. For herself, she mainly remembers the weapon for its terrible acts in Hela’s hand. But Thor claims her a changed weapon, one capable of great good and of measuring the worthy. Has claimed a bond to the shattered hammer; a bond it would appear that his former lady understands better than Valkyrie herself.

It’s a thought that brings to mind just how quickly this has all progressed. Valkyrie’s known Thor for barely a handful of years and then, on the basis of that slight acquaintance, he throws his whole birthright at her, leaving her frantically trying to figure out what it is that he intends.

If he weren’t so clearly an overwhelmed kid, trying to do his best, she’d have cut and run, leaving him to it. Instead, _Thor_ cut and ran. She’d be annoyed if it weren’t so clear that he needs some space.

Needs help.

And that’s what it all comes down to: Asgard needs a Queen. And, true, Valkyrie is looking for _her_ queen. That the two are not necessarily the same seems to have escaped people’s notice.

She misses Bodil. Like crazy. Still can’t believe that she’s dead. Wants to wake up, to get up, to claw off her skin and escape whatever reality this is that has her living in it, alone.

She _really_ wants a drink.

Instead she’s here, on a bodged-together attempt at a remaking of Asgard, fulfilling a promise to a man she barely knows and upholding an obligation to a people she’s finding no solace with.

Is making peace with a woman who broke her friend’s heart. And is dwelling in a realm with people who don’t know how to spot a war even when it comes bearing ice blades, right in to their very world.

“It’s not going to end well with Jotunheim, Lady Jane.” But she already knows that her words are falling on deaf ears. “They lie.”

“You can’t know that.”

“I can. There will be war. People will die.” Earth doesn’t even realise how much it needs help.

Thor: they never should have forced him to be king like that. But now he’s returning, because she asked him to. He’s coming to an Earth that still doesn’t think that it wants him, and to a people that he feels he’s failed. Again. With Loki. It’s hard to imagine how this will work out well.

But at least this time there’ll an enemy to point him at, no matter what the mortals might think.

“We have to give peace a chance.”

“Don’t be so trusting.” Valkyrie steps up to Jane, intending to stand side-by-side with her, the better to press her point. And yet, as she moves, she seems to catch shadows shifting across Mjolnir’s fragments.

Valkyrie freezes. It’s the gloom. She’s not seeing properly. “Jane. Did you just-?”

Jane looks over, face politely curious, and Valkyrie can _hear_ the click of shifting Uru. “Just what, your majesty?”

Can _hear_ Mjolnir move and – more to the point – can look into the eyes of Jane Foster, one Thor named worthy, and see-

“Doctor Foster?” The door bangs open. Valkyrie jumps, though she’s done nothing wrong.

Agent Coulson looks in. “ _Here_ you are. You need to come along, doctor.”

“Did you reach Thor?” Jane looks – and sounds – completely normal.

“No.” By contrast, Coulson sounds vexed. “He won’t answer.” Like the agent expected a different outcome.

#

Jane’s hand on her elbow briefly stops Valkyrie’s return to the sunlight. She turns to look at the other woman, eyebrow raised and hopefully convening ‘you’d better have a good point, if you don’t want to lose your fingers’.

“Do you truly think he’ll come back, your majesty?”

“Of course.” It’s not even in doubt.

_That’s what heroes do._


End file.
